I must thank you for doing your part to ensure my God given right to a
free and open democracy governed by the people. It is comforting to know
that we have collectively appointed a benevolent despot such as yourself
to sit atop the capital's hill to look down upon us with your satellites
and surveillance bugs and packet sniffers and what not. A kind emissary
of goodness, ensuring that we are safe from the terrorist threat. The
terrorist threat whoever they may be. It could be me. It could be you.
It could be Henry Kissinger. It could even be Joseph McCarthy. Oh wait,
he's dead. It couldn't be him, but it could surely be the person that
lives two doors down from me. She keeps stealing my paper. About every
third day she takes it. I never have seen her take it, but I know it's
her. But don't worry, you don't need to investigate. I'm already keeping
an eye on her. I have her on a list. And I have that list on another list.
A meta-list per se. And these meta-lists are meta-referencing each other
all over the meta-place and I think I am starting to see real links between
people and events in my meta-database. You wouldn't believe me if I told
you, and for good reason I suppose, you shouldn't believe anyone these
days... but anyway, I'm beginning to realize that except for myself, I
am not so certain that anyone else isn't a terrorist. As such, I am writing
to you to propose that we have public tribunals in which every last man,
woman and child in this country must stand in front of a court of law
and plead their case as to why they're not a terrorist. As a concerned
citizen, I would be more than happy to precede as judge over this spectacular
showing of American justice, truth and patriotism. This is the only real
feasible solution for weeding out what I like to call the "bad thinkers"
amongst us. These "bad thinkers" are a bad problem because they are always
thinking "bad thoughts" that might be interpreted as an un-American. In
America, we simply cannot think anything that might be considered un-American.
Un-American thoughts should put us on lists. Lists that put us on trial.
Trials that deport us to Afghanistan. Yes, anyone found guilty of harboring
indecent thoughts towards America should be deported to Afghanistan. It
may cost a bit of money to send them all that way, but I suppose we could
just cut more funding from the security at the national monuments. The
funds we could divert from the long existing public protection programs
would more than fund this new offensive action against the terrorist threat.
Besides, do we really need anyone protecting our national monuments? Probably
not. Who would actually want to strike such sacred landmarks? Clearly,
since we are looked upon by a benevolent God in a perfectly ordered and
rational world, such terrible things could never happen to America's national
treasures. As such, ideally we would fire everyone but one single park
ranger and we would send this park ranger a memo in which we inform him,
not her, that he, not she, should do everything in his power to mislead
and confuse the American public into believing that there hasn't been
anything in the way of budget cuts or decreases in security. Yes, he would
tell them that all is well, while meanwhile all the funds that would have
went to protecting the Motherland will be quietly diverted to our mass
deportation to Afghanistan. If you don't believe that it could work, look
how successful such maneuvers have been in terms of Iraq. Budget cuts.
Mass layoffs. The national monuments are virtually unprotected. Iraq got
a teeny tiny bit more funding. We're still massively in debt, but that's
beside the point. We were massively in debt in the fifties and that was
a decade of great economic prosperity. Look at all the stuff we had then.
Tons of stuff. Oodles of stuff. We bought stuff in the fifties because
quite frankly, any moment could have been our last. Any moment, those
God hating Reds and their evil nuclear arsenal could have rained down
like the four horsemen of the apocalypse and annihilated us all. For a
while it didn't look like we had to worry about such nonsense anymore
with the fall of the Evil Empire and the resulting transparency of an
economic boom. How foolish we were in the late nineties. Yes, what innocent
and silly little lambs we were, making our websites, trading our stocks,
getting blow-jobs in the oval office. But we were awoken from our dream
one fateful morning. Yes, we were awoken. And now we know that we have
to worry more than ever because at any given moment some crazy fool could
walk into any good 'ol American fast-food restaurant with a secondhand
twenty-ton nuclear warhead under his coat and vaporize us all. This idea
of an instantaneous, vaporized, nuclear death has been worrying me a tad
bit lately, so I went ahead and did some research on the subject. After
some investigation, I now feel confident about the preventative measures
I could take in case of a nuclear attack. Thanks to a very informative
filmstrip called "Duck and Cover," I now know that when I see a bright
flash, brighter than anything I've ever seen before, brighter than the
sun, I should duck and cover. I've been practicing ducking and covering
with my friends and classmates. Sometimes, when we're walking down the
street or to our next class, someone says incoming and we all dive for
the nearest wall and put our hands over our head and wait for an atomic
aid worker to come and tell us that the radiation has passed and it's
now safe to get back on our bicycles and continue playing. Needles to
say, this preventative technique is quite comforting. Almost as comforting
as the color-coded terror alert system. Thanks to the God given miracle
of modern science, I have the color-coded terror alert system coming in
on a direct feed to my wristwatch so I can check for updates approximately
every three and a half minutes. I wait fervently for the little colored
bars to go from red to orange and orange to red. I act accordingly as
well. When the color-coded system goes to red, I make it my business to
be even more vigilant and watchful. I investigate everyone within eyeshot
with a tad bit more of a suspicious glare. Yes, I scan and patrol my field
of sight and vigilantly make note of anything that may not seem one hundred
percent normal Americana. I try to revolve my whole day around the color-coded
terror alert system as well. When I wake up in the morning, the first
thing I do, before anything else, is check for the days color forecast.
Lets say, for instance, on this given day the threat level is pulled high.
Well then, the first thing I would do is panic and think of things I could
buy that would make me feel better about my miserable, temporal, blip
of an existence. Then, like all good Americans, the next thing I would
do would be to relieve my bladder to prove to myself that I am not a terrorist.
After urination is done and through with, I get dressed. Since the threat
level is high I will wear my red Coca Cola Classic t-shirt, my Levi jeans
and my red Nike sneakers. All American brands through and through and
through. I then take out my extra-elevated, extra-vigilant, threat-level
high, list of lists, red spiral notebook. Of course I have to search my
messy room for a while until I find where I left my red felt tip marker.
On my way out the door I grab a nice red McIntosh apple for breakfast.
Not to be confused with the computer. They're not computers, they're apples
and they're quite juicy and sweet. Just like the people at Motherland
Security. Anyway, I get on one of the red-line trains and go to class.
The red-line is actually out of the way, but the alert level is high,
so we must all be vigilant and do our part to color coordinate. For lunch
I eat spaghetti with red sauce and for dinner generally I eat the same
thing, but maybe with meatballs. I am a picky eater and have a limited
menu. I have considered trying new foods, but I like what I like and it
would be wholly un-American to try something new or change my mind or
possibly even try something that might even be considered ethnic food.
Besides, there are only four ethnicities after all; those being, American,
British, the coalition of the willing and terrorists. British food is
wretched, the coalition of the willing probably only eats McDonalds hamburgers
and I wouldn't dare eat terrorist food. So, on that account, I'll simply
just stick with good ol' American spaghetti and meatballs. And then after
dinner is done and through with, I check the color scheme one last time
before bed and change my sheets accordingly to match the nights forecast.
Finally I go to sleep. Yes, sleep... where my ethereal thoughts are filled
with an endless assortment of consumer grade goods and blood curdling
images of doomsday scenarios. Come to think of it, this is not that different
from my waking reality, except in my dreams I am not being vigilant for
suspicious individuals that may potentially be terrorists. Is that wrong
of me? Should I be looking for potential terrorists in my dream state?
The Department of Motherland Security has never really been clear on that
point. And if I am supposed to be searching for potential terrorist's
in the recesses of mind as it free associates, if I were to find one sneaking
about in the deep dark crevices of my cranium, does that make me a terrorist?
Maybe the Department of Motherland Security should start monitoring my
dreams at night. It would probably be more productive than your current
drive to investigate nonexistent patent infringement concerning generic
rubrics cubes in the mid-western United States. At the very least, monitoring
my sleep would be far more productive than the current nonexistent monitoring
of the countless multitudes of shipping containers that pass unchallenged
through American ports every day. However, I think I have a solution to
your problem. Maybe the Department of Motherland Security can reassign
the one remaining national monument park ranger to inspect all of the
incoming international shipping containers. I'm really just tossing around
potential solutions for you. I suppose, in the end, you know best. I mean,
after all, terrorism is the biggest threat to the stability of the world
today... unless you ask the pentagon, of course. Their reports seem to
indicate that environmental destruction is the biggest threat to the stability
of the world today. Then again, what does the Pentagon know? They clearly
don't have the track record and know-how of the Department of Motherland
Security. We all know its far more important to guard our rural Canadian
borders than it is to protect the forests from being chopped down within
our borders a couple of miles down the road. It's not as though the planet
is a limited resource or there's delicate ecosystems of which we're an
integral part of that are being destroyed under our own watch. We'll be
just fine regardless of what the radical, left wing, tree hugging, anarchists
at the Pentagon may think. Anyway, I was thinking that maybe when we're
done cutting down the forests, we can dig into our deficit and subcontract
the logging companies to construct a large-scale wooden post-fence to
keep the terrorists out of North Dakota. Once again, it's just a suggestion,
but I do hope you take the time to consider it. I know you and your coworkers
are all busy people and your time is of the utmost importance, so I won't
bother taking up any more of it. I just wanted to contact you and inform
you of the state of my grassroots campaign against terror, suggestions
I had for the improvement of your monumental campaign against terror and
congratulate you on rooting out the bad seeds amongst us. So, atta boy,
a job well done. Keep up the good work in making the Motherland a secure
G-rated nation suitable for little American children to play hopscotch
in the streets at night. May God bless you.